Pensioner households have big income differential

According to Statistics Finland's income
distribution statistics, there were good 890,000 pensioner
households in Finland, which is as many as one-third of all
households in the country. Pensioner households whose reference
person had been an upper-level employee when working have clearly
the highest income. Their income level was distinctly higher than
for total households. The income level was weakest in those
pensioner households where the reference person had not been in
working life when active. The income level of this group is clearly
below the general income level of households.

Pensioner households’ income according to
the reference person’s previous socio-economic group, EUR in
2005 money

Three-year moving average. Income concept equivalent disposable
monetary income per household. Equivalent income is the household's
disposable income divided by the number of consumption units in the
household. The household reference person is as a rule the member
of the household with the highest income.

The median for households’ equivalent disposable monetary
income was EUR 22,300 in 2015. For pensioner households, the
corresponding income was EUR 18,700. Inside pensioner households
the distribution of income was great, however. Pensioner households
whose reference person was a former upper-level employee had
clearly the highest income. In these pensioner households the
median income was EUR 29,000. The number of pensioner households
with retired upper-level employees was in 2015 nearly 130,000, that
is, around 14 per cent of all pensioner households.

Among pensioner households, households where the reference
person is other than an earnings-related pension recipient (other
pensioner) had the lowest income. The median income of these
persons living primarily on national pension was EUR 14,000. The
median income of retired farmer households was also fairly low,
being EUR 15,000 in 2015. Both of these low-income pensioner groups
are fairly small; other pensioner households numbered around 25,000
and retired farmer households good 60,000 in 2015.

Households of retired workers is the biggest group of pensioner
households, around 320,000 in 2015. This made up 36 per cent of all
pensioner households. The equivalent median income of this group
was EUR 17,500. The next biggest pensioner group constituted
households of retired lower-level employees, being 290,000. They
accounted for 32 per cent of all pensioner households. The median
income of retired lower-level employee households was about EUR
19,200 in 2015.

There were nearly 70,000 retired self-employed households in
2015. The median for equivalent disposable monetary income of this
pensioner group was EUR 17,900.

The examinations above were made with the median for equivalent
disposable monetary income. The income concept is internationally
comparable and it does not include imputed income items (such as
income from owner-occupied dwellings) or sales profits. Comparison
by households' population groups with different income concepts is
possible with the help of income distribution statistics’
database tables.